Girl Sleuth (18 page)

N
O DOUBT
S
TRATEMEYER
would have been as thrilled as his publishers with his instant success, had he only lived to witness Nancy's ascent. He was home sick in bed for most of the winter of 1930 with pneumonia, and even through the final editing of the first three Nancy Drew books, he had relied heavily on Harriet Otis Smith. Letters flew back and forth between the Stratemeyer home, where Edna was caring for her father, and the office in Manhattan. “Dear Miss Stratemeyer, and poor Miss Stratemeyer, nurse, housekeeper, and business woman,” Otis Smith wrote in January, upset over the slow pace of a ghostwriter's work. “I am in my first real jam over here, and will turn to you to know how much I can ask of your father, for I do not wish to throw worry on him that may impede his recovery.” It was she, not Stratemeyer, who had read Mildred's manuscript for
The Bungalow Mystery,
the third Nancy Drew book, and made the final decisions about it with her employer's blessing. Stratemeyer was confined to bed and to dictating letters to his daughter, who bore her burden, if not lightly, then at least with a certain amount of humor. Lenna was by this time an invalid, and Harriet had four young children, as well as a host of club and Sunday school responsibilities that took up her time, so it was Edna who sat with her father daily, bringing him food and serving as his secretary. “This is all Dad has to say, Miss Smith, and now he will eat his orange and be a good patient,” she added on to one of her father's letters that January. “Think he is tired of this kind of life and much prefers the office. Think I need a course in shorthand in
order to keep up with his messages, besides a nurses' uniform when doing the other jobs.”

By March Edward was back in the office happily dealing with his series again. But his health did not hold. Sending the outline for
The Mystery at Lilac Inn
to Mildred in late April was to be one of his final acts as head of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. By the following week, he was too ill to even look at illustrations for a book that was about to be published. Harriet Otis Smith wrote to one of his editors, “It is a question—as always in pneumonia—as to how long an already weakened heart can stand the strain.”

The answer turned out to be not very long at all. On May 10, 1930, just twelve days after the launching of Nancy Drew, Edward Stratemeyer succumbed to pneumonia at his home in Newark at the age of sixty-seven. The response was immediate and passionate. “Your Husband and Father was every inch a man, and deeply admired and respected by all his friends and business acquaintances,” wrote one publisher to the Stratemeyer family. The newspapers weighed in, too. “Now Mr. Stratemeyer . . . has laid down his pen,” mourned the
New York Times
in their second piece within a week about his death. “Who is to write tales of adventure for the boys of the airplane and television age?” Letters of condolence poured into the Syndicate offices in Manhattan, from authors, publishers, magazines, and the charities toward which Stratemeyer had been uncommonly generous. Everyone who came into contact with him seemed to have been changed for the better by the experience. “He was the ‘grand old man' of the Juvenile book world,” Alexander Grosset wrote to Magdalene Stratemeyer, “and his passing will leave a place that will be difficult to fill.”

In particular, many of the young writers he had nurtured with his patient comments and kind soul wrote in to pay their respects. Leslie McFarlane, author of the Hardy Boys, wrote to Harriet Otis Smith, “Although I had never met him personally I felt that I knew him as a real friend by reason of my five years' association with him in the writing of the books he assigned to me. His kindness to Mrs. McFarlane and myself at the time of our marriage and on the occasion of the birth of our daughter betokened a personal interest that we appreciated more than he possibly imagined. I think he must have been a very kindly and warm-hearted man . . . My work for Mr. Stratemeyer helped me so much in days of my literary apprenticeship that you may be sure this letter is no hollow and conventional expression.”

Mildred, too, wrote Harriet and Edna a heartfelt note to say how sorry she was to lose him. In a letter to Otis Smith, though, after brief condolences, she was all business. Bringing up the looming issue on everyone's minds, she wrote, “Dear Miss Smith: It was with the deepest regret that I learned of Mr. Stratemeyer's sudden death . . . As you requested, I will forward the Nancy Drew volume as soon as completed, which should be sometime this month. As soon as you know what is to be done about future work, I will appreciate being notified.”

What
was
to be done about future work? With Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and all the offspring of the Stratemeyer empire? With no sons to inherit the family business, Edward had made provisions in his will for it to go to his wife, with the idea that it could be sold (it was valued at some half a million dollars) and the proceeds used to support her (to each of his daughters he had left the sum of $20,000). But he had not counted on the Depression, and suddenly the odds that anyone would have the cash or inclination to buy the company were questionable. Then
there was the matter of secrecy. Other than Harriet Otis Smith, there was no one, not even Edward's own family, who really understood the workings of his Syndicate or its history. He had planned it that way, though he also understood the trouble it might create. As Edna wrote to Harriet many years later, “His one complaint was that at his death everything would die with him.” Anyone taking it on would have an enormous job just understanding it, much less trying to keep it going into the future under such difficult economic circumstances and without its founder's genius for plot and character creation. Everything was suddenly in question, including the fate of his final contribution, the teenaged detective with blue eyes and gumption to spare.

7

A
UTHOR
, J
UVENILE
. Executors will consider bona fide purchaser for nationally known and prosperous syndicate of boys' and girls' books, including rights in many well known series. Reply, E.C.S., care of
Publishers Weekly.

T
HE FIRST DAYS
after Edward's death were, for his family, an odd combination of grief and urgency. Given the economic conditions of both the Stratemeyers and the country, the future direction of the Syndicate had to be charted as quickly as possible. Neither Lenna nor Edna had any earning power, and though Harriet was well-off thanks to Russell's work as a stockbroker and her inheritance, she could not afford to support her mother and sister in their current lifestyle. Nor, with four children of her own, could she be expected to do so. The first order of business was to transfer the task of executor from Lenna, who was in no
position to make decisions, to her daughters. Newly in charge, Edna and Harriet soon found themselves awash in information about their father's work and world that was entirely unfamiliar and often overwhelming. As Edna exclaimed less than a week after his death, “I never dreamed of so much red tape before.” The legal matters involved in a business that employed writers-for-hire and had all of its revenues tied up in rights and royalties as opposed to actual book publishing were maddeningly intricate. In addition, Edward had begun to sell radio and movie rights to some of his stories, adding another complication.

With Harriet Otis Smith as their only guide—she had agreed to stay on in her current role for the foreseeable future, saying that “Mr. Stratemeyer was far too kind to permit of any other course”—Edward's loyal daughters began to wade through the papers in the Madison Square Park office in order to determine how best to consolidate and sell the business. No other course of action seemed possible. Neither sister had any business experience, nor had they participated in the work of the Syndicate in any serious way for years. Certainly they knew nothing of the day-to-day details involved in bringing a series from inspired idea to finished book. Nevertheless, they were committed to making the most informed decision possible about the future of their father's brainchild. While Edna tackled some of the accounting at home, such as paying salaries and money owed to ghostwriters, Harriet took it upon herself to become the public face of the Syndicate. For Edward's publishers were not only saddened but unnerved by his death. They counted on the Stratemeyer series as a big part of their business and were panicked at the thought of either a great delay in their production or a cessation altogether. As Otis Smith knew well, “If these publishers suddenly lose the right to bring out not only new volumes in their big paying series, but the
right to issue any new book at all by their very popular ‘authors,' it will be a serious loss to them of both money and prestige.” Someone had to take on the responsibility of assuring them that the house of Stratemeyer would not go dim, even if that someone was not entirely sure of it herself.

With a clear division of labor established, Harriet wrote a note to her father's trusted assistant just eight days after Edward's death, demonstrating her desire to get a handle on the situation as well as her obvious ability to do so. That Wellesley education and strong spirit, it seemed, were going to come in handy after all. “My dear Miss Smith,” she wrote. “At this time, of course, we are still bewildered, and must acquaint ourselves with more of the details before coming to any decision. To this end, we shall interview the various publishers with whom my father had business associations, and try to get their point of view. Grosset and Dunlap have asked for such an interview on Tuesday, and as my sister is unable to go, I shall go to their office myself. Will you get ready for me on Monday or Tuesday morning if possible, a short summary of the dealings my father had with these people—number of years, number of series, number of books, series running now which are considered good, and any other data which you think would help to make my conference with them an intelligent and helpful one. I will come into the office some time the latter part of Tuesday morning. Very sincerely, Harriet S. Adams.”

Though they had remained very personally close all through her married life—she had even named her second son after him—Harriet was so far removed from her father's business life that she did not know the difference between Bomba the Jungle Boy and Joe Hardy. Yet she was determined to learn as much as she could and proceeded to do it with an energy that, while not uncharacteristic, might have surprised those who did not know
her well. Happily settled with her brood in the plush New Jersey town of Maplewood, Harriet was, by this time, every inch the well-to-do young matron. As a newspaper article on the Syndicate would later muse, “Were it not for the extra spark, we would be tempted to nominate Mrs. Adams for the role of typical Maplewood householder and clubwoman.” She was active in the New York Wellesley Club and wrote for the newsletter of the Maplewood Women's Club. She also taught Sunday school and was the mother of two boys—thirteen-year-old Russell Jr., known as Sunny, and five-year-old Edward, the baby of the family; as well as two girls—Camilla, who turned eleven in the summer of 1930, and Patricia (Patsy), who was eight. Harriet had help both with her children and her household, and was able to devote some of the time she usually spent on her other activities to Syndicate business, if not full-time, then at least enough of the time to make some headway toward getting things in order to sell.

In addition to dealing with nervous publishers, she had to consider the few offers to buy the company that were trickling in. In this, as in everything during those first few months, Otis Smith's wisdom was critical. Though she was, as she put it, “the only person who has a knowledge of this business as a whole,” she harbored no illusions about who was really in charge, and as such was the ideal helpmate. “If you are interested in the buying of the Syndicate, you might apply to his daughters and executrixes, Mrs. Russell V. Adams and Miss Edna C. Stratemeyer, 171 North Seventh Street, Newark, New Jersey,” she wrote to one interested party, warning him, “It is a rather large business and will require considerable capital to run it, but either Mrs. Adams or Miss Stratemeyer can give you details.” Polite business correspondence notwithstanding, she confessed her real opinion about this prospective new owner to Edna and Harriet lest they should rush
into something ill-advised: “I think he is just a foolish boy and does not know what he is talking about and doubt if he could raise two thousand dollars.”